Woopsie. A statue commemorating Mikhail Kalashnikov, designer of the AK-47, was unveiled in Moscow this week. Looks like a good statue. At the base of the stature there’s a sculpted “exploded view” diagram of the AK-47. Well… of the German StG 44, in fact, not the AK-47. They look similar to be sure, but they are not the same. And once that mistake was discovered, they delicately chopped the diagram off with an angle grinder. The link above shows the before and after photos.

This sort of screwup is not as uncommon as you might hope. Sometime circa 1994 I attended the unveiling of a veterans memorial on (or near, I forget exactly) Rock Island Arsenal. It consisted of polished black marble slabs, one for each war on up to the Persian Gulf War. Each slab had “art” laser or chemically etched into the surface; pictures rather than actual sculpture. I had a difficult time not making a scene when I realized that the Persian Gulf War slab showed what was *supposed* to be an AH-64 Apache, but was actually an Agusta A129 Mangusta, an Italian attack helicopter that the US military most assuredly did *not* use in Iraq.

This is also not an AK-47. Or is it? Hmmm…

So where are the statues of Eugene Stoner, Edward Teller and John Moses Browning? I suggest for every statue of Jefferson Davis or Robert E. Lee taken down, they be replaced with prominent American weapons designers.

The idea is to create a system mobile enough to fire off a few shots and then pack up and leave before counter-battery fire comes raining down. Seems to me, though, to really make the system work well it needs to have an autoloader with a magazine of four or more rounds and, preferably, the ability to fire either on the move, or within a few seconds of stopping, and then to get back moving again within a second or two.

Neutronium is a common substance in science fiction. It is a real substance of incredible density, so a lot of authors have decided that it would make a neato structural element. The problem: it would explode.

Neutronium is, as the name suggests, a substance made out of pure neutrons. It exists in neutron stars… but really nowhere else. It *can’t* really exist anywhere else. Neutrons exists in close proximity in the nuclei of atoms, but there they are held in place with the strong nuclear force; eliminate the protons, and the neutrons will go flying apart. In neutron stars, the neutrons are held together solely by gravity. If you were to somehow teleport a chunk of neutronium off a neutron star, it would promptly explode.

Here’s an old video from Thunderf00t explaining another problem with neutronium: outside of the gravitational field of neutron stars and the strong force of nuclei, neutrons decay with a half life of about 10 minutes. And the results of that are pretty energetic.

So if you want to use neutronium in your sci-fi story, you got some ‘splainin’ to do.

The B61-12 is called “dangerous” because it’s yield is *ridiculously* low, variable between 300 *tons* and fifty kilotons. How it’s a “super nuke” I can’t say.

Entertainingly, in an effort to define this bomb as “dangerous,” the author of the piece refers to both International ANSWER (a communist front group) and Russia Today (Putins mouthpiece in the west). these organizatiosn don;t want the US to have this or any other new nukes. Which means it’s probably a good idea to keep developing, testing and fielding new nukes.

Here’s an ok video about the Davy Crockett nuclear weapon. This was a dinky device… a recoilless-rifle launched projectile with a simple mechanical timer and a yield of around 25 tons (not kilotons… tons). It was really only meant for one thing… tormenting the hordes of Soviet infantry and armor that was expected to come pouring into West Germany Any Day Now.

I’ve been wanting to make a 1:1 scale replica of the M388 projectile for years, but I’ve never found the time.

The GBU-43A/B “Massive Ordnance Air Blast (aka Mother Of All Bombs)” is dropped from a C-130. It sits on an aluminum cradle and rolls out the back of the plane, pulled out by a parachute. The question is: how does that chute work? If you watch the video below, you can see the parachute pack “drop” from the upper part of the doorway. This looks like either the pack was attached to the ceiling of the cargo bay (or the inner portion of the aft door that hinges upwards) and simply dropped, or perhaps it’s hurled out by a catapult of some type. Does anyone know? I’ve looked but so far I’ve failed to find any photos, diagrams or videos depicting the setup prior to deployment.

Another rare piece of early Dyna Soar color art. This one shows the Dyna Soar heading to space atop the centaur upper stage of an Atlas booster. And if you think you are seeing corrugations on the back of the spaceplane, you are correct. At this stage in the design process the Dyna Soar *did* […]

So the media is currently ulcerating over Trump suggesting that he’d like to see NFL owners fire players who decide to disrespect the US flag & anthem before games. Here’s the thing: 1: It’s the players right to disrespect the flag, the anthem, the US. 2: It’s any citizens right to say that he’d like […]

Yes, I’ve posted these before. But I feel it’s important for everyone to maintain a proper level of understanding of the encabulator, the turbo-encabulator and the retro-encabulator. And of course once you have an encabulator, you’ll need to diagnose it from time to time: There have of course been advances in the field […]

Argh. Facebook is not my favorite thing. But, apparently, it’s where all the cool kids hang out, so the Aerospace Projects Review Facebook page that I cobbled together years ago, I’ve started posting things in again. One of the weird things about Facebook is that you (apparently) can’t see a page unless you are signed […]

Oh, boy! Mayhem! A Group Of 62 Catholics Has Accused The Pope Of Spreading Heresy Not being Catholic, I have no dog in this fight. Still, it’s always entertaining when religious leaders tell other religious leaders they’re wrong. Wacky hijinks often ensue.

So, Star Trek Discovery plopped onto the airwaves tonight. My review: It was certainly pretty, but all those visuals were spoiled by a whole lot of “WTF am I looking at?” Especially with the “Klingons” who bore almost no relationship to any prior iteration of the Klingons, in biology, aesthetics or culture. Heck, they even […]

… in a drone: This is pretty much exactly the sort of footage that would have been impossible to get prior to the current generation of drones. So just imagine what people will be able to film once the batteries for drones are actually *good,* with the power and energy density of chemical fuels like […]

OK, let’s say your town is plagued by a transdimensional monster that takes the form of a killer psychotic clown. Who would be the best person to try to destroy this menace? That’s right, the goddamn Batman: And because why not: Bill Nye just walked into our elevator while I was snap chatting.. pic.twitter.com/LwCOITAEft […]

A deli worker was attacked, someone came across the counter and slashed at him with a knife. He fought back with a knife of his own, and the other guy got the worse of it. So, what happened? Did the city of New York throw the deli worker a ticker tape parade? Give him the […]